March 21st, 2008
Taxes and Trips
If you hadn’t noticed, I have skipped a couple of days. I’m still readjusting to the time zone change, although as of today, I have slept two nights in a row. Only for a few hours, but at least it happened at the right time of day.
Friday was a good day, although not too hectic. I started off the morning by getting my taxes done. That took about an hour and a half. It should have been relatively simple, since I had slowly cut down my business as a graduate student and shut it down entirely in early summer. There wasn’t nearly as much in the way of income or expenses as in previous years, so that end of things was simpler.
The Japan income, though, was more of an issue than I thought. I really didn’t think they would want to tax it at all. I had assumed that under a certain dollar amount, they just wouldn’t care. Especially since I have no W2 or other proof of what I was paid. I could have lied and said pretty much anything. Still, I claimed the right amount, as much so I could learn the rules for the future as anything else. It turns out that you have to live in a foreign country for 330 days before the government will exclude foreign income. As it was, my pay was taxed at the normal rate for American income. That sucks, but I had some losses held over from previous years that offset the income. Anyway, that ordeal is over, and it didn’t cost me very much all things considered.
Meet The Kids!
Then I went to meet my brother and the kids at Friendly’s restaurant. This was the first real chance I had to see and talk to my niece. The nephew was more interested in his Grandpa today than me, so the niece and I got re-acquainted. She brough a library book with her and read part of it to me. Whoah! I know I was reading in the first grade, but I remember a lot of “See Ann and Sam run” type stories. This was a regular book with long sentences, realistic words, and a plot. Either they teach kids reading earlier or more efficiently than they used to or she’s just way smarter than I was at that age. Anyway, lunch went well, and the kids were great. I’ll see them again on Sunday when we go over for Easter. I still have my “Japan Gifts” to give them as well. I bet they’ve never had octopus jerky in their Easter baskets before. No, I’m NOT kidding. Heh heh.
Home A Week; Time To Move!
Not too long after getting home, I decided to work on my vacation trip plans. I had looked at a few campgrounds the night before, and it looked like it was going to be hard to get a place to stay in early April, so I knew I could procrastinate much longer. I had wanted to go around the first and come back a week or so later. No dice; everything was sold out, and the absolute earliest I could get in anywhere was April 12th. Although I had planned all along to stay at more than one place, the scattershot schedule of the Florida campgrounds made finding a place to stay every night in sequence much more difficult that I had expected. Instead of three or four widely scattered beaches, I ended up scheduling and reserving stays at EIGHT different locations.
That’s a lot of setting up and taking down the tent; maybe I’ll buy one of those quick “pop-up” style tents since my old one is wearing thin. Yes, I’ll be camping the entire time except for one two-night stay in a Miami Beach Hotel in the middle. That’s OK; I like camping and it’ll be warm enough to be comfortable. I’ll be staying only in state campgrounds, and they all have detailed websites to show me details of the places with maps and photos. Also, each place uses the same reservation system, so my entire trip is reserved in one place.
“Why camping?,” you might ask. The obvious reason; price. I have a budget of about $1000 for my trip, not counting food and stuff that I would end up buying at home anyway. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, since I’ll probably never have this free of a schedule again, so even cheapskate me can scrape up $1000 for this. I could have stayed in a hotel somewhere down there for a five or six days, or rented a house a little further north for a week. By camping, I can visit eight different widely-separated places and do it over a period of twenty-three days. That’s right, I’ll be a beach bum from April 12th through May 2nd. Unless of course I get bored and decide to come home early, which I suppose is a possibility. But the reservations are made, and everything is set except for getting down there. I am planning to drive my own car, but I guess I ought to look into renting one. I’m betting that three weeks of a car rental is pretty expensive though.
And that was pretty much it for today. I’m all set and scheduled to start making more specific plans for my next “Adventure.” Upon my return from Florida, the big “job search” will begin.
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